the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

The Massachusetts multimillionaire who won his party’s nomination largely on perceptions of “electability” had become the target of a ferocious blitz of negative advertising.

Electability was always pretty fucking relative here - "the Massachusetts multimillionaire who dragged his party’s nomination from their gritted teeth once all of the other candidates proved to be screaming lunatics" might be a bit closer, but maybe there was a word limit.

(I know it's not actually Romney, but it's really not actually Romney is my point)

He also seems to have forgotten how the Massachusetts multimillionaire secured the nomination--ask Gingrich and Santorum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/how-to-counterattack-obama/2012/08/10/f979112e-e2e6-11e1-a25e-15067bb31849_blog.html

In the right-wing world the only misleading ads have been from Dems, of course.

A Sullivan standin has an 'uh-DUH' moment:

What this all unfortunately may mean is that the campaigns, their supporters, and the press see almost the entire political process as nothing but an athletic bullshit competition.

YA THINK?

wouldn't "bullshit athletic competition" be the better construction?

Both work, really.

how the hell is this "voter suppression"

My hat has long been off to GOP spinmeisters at simply being better at messaging than dems, but yeah this totally seems like flailing to me. "Oh, that very real attempt at disenfranchisement of the Dem vote via voter ID, well... uh... oh, look over THERE!

Weird...truce or dare?

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/romney-to-obama-please-stop-attacking-my-business-taxes.php?ref=fpa

Romney said he would prefer the campaigns “only talk about issues,” and claimed that “our ads haven’t gone after the president personally...We haven’t dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven’t gone after the personal things.”

if all romney has left in his quiver are jeremiah wright and bill ayers...

lol "if you guys don't stop hitting us we're going to imitate John McCain"

"stop talking about my taxes or palin is gonna be my veep"

Marco Rubio's got a zing about community organizing all lined up

romney pisses off iowa republican voters by saying he'll end wind industry tax credit:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20120810_Stance_on_wind_tax_credits_could_hurt_Romney_in_Iowa.html

Many Republicans in Congress support tax credits for renewable energy, including Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Iowa Rep. Tom Latham, who introduced Romney at an event Wednesday in Des Moines (though when a Latham aide was asked about the tax credits before the event, she covered her ears with her hands, said "I can't hear you," and walked away).

meanwhile the UN is calling on the US to curtail ethanol production because drought conditions are driving up global grain prices already. kind of o/t but mentioning iowa made me think of it.

if all romney has left in his quiver are jeremiah wright and bill ayers...

That's what I thought was so weird--this has to be the lamest veiled threat ever. So lame that there's really no point in even veiling it. (On a Friday afternoon, no less--let's time it so no one will even notice our veiled threat.)

are mitt's people only allowing him to give big interviews on fridays? yow.

if they don't lay off the taxes thing Mitt's going to demand to see Obama's birth certificate

Next Friday Mitt will threaten to call Obama a "crazy bozo ozone man"

In hindsight, Obama probably made a mistake by drawing out the birth certificate shenanigans. Accusations were baseless, of course, but he should've produced the long form the next morning to shut people up. Now Mitt has a blueprint for dodging the tax history question (of course, I've learned he did the exact same shit in Massachusetts too).

More (fake) shenanigans from Massachusetts:

http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/08/08/scott-brown-says-effort-register-welfare-recipients-geared-boost-elizabeth-warren/olZaD3PyuyEcUBue4TdHHL/story.html

The taxes thing, it's almost like if you went for a big job interview and your resume listed one place of work for 20 years and you refused to give any contact info.

Hahaha, my dad on facebook: "It may be true that Romney doesn't connect as well with ordinary people. That is because he connects much better with extraordinary people!"

dad ftw (in the corny dad sweepstakes)

Romney to Announce Vice-Presidential Choice on Saturday Morning in Norfolk, Va.

I wonder if he actually planned to make this a weekend thing or if between the romneycare slip and the whining to Chuck Todd they realized they had to hurry up and give the press something else to talk about

Feel a little sorry for the person that takes it, tbh.

actually turns out palin and biden were announced on saturdays too, guess there's a logic to it

The timing of Palin's was to pull the rug out from Obama's convention speech--it was the day after. Worked quite well, in terms of that one specific objective.

In this case it will pull the rug out from...uh...the women's 4x100m relay world record?

dear god, plz let the vp nom be someone lulz.
thx,

I remember how closely Obama's announcement was covered--CNN had cameras outside Biden's home as he was whisked away late at night. I'm guessing that Rob Portman's house is not even being monitored by a neighborhood kid with a cell phone.

all the twitter speculation I'm seeing points to Ryan.

nbc news is reporting it

(didn't the obama campaign deliberately punk a news outlet they didn't like with the wrong VP pick last time around? i wonder)

well, nbc news is reporting that "sources say"

intrade has ryan at 89.9%

If it is Ryan, I expect they'll cut away from the announcement to an Obama attack ad.

among a lot of left-wingers i knew at the time, there was a kind of unknowingness + fear surrounding palin. who was this woman? why did right-wing america respond so fervently to her? i got chain-emails about how she banned books and used her baby like a secret fascist prop. anyway, i don't think ryan is going to inspire the same reaction.

when they first started talking about him as a possible vp candidate i thought for two weeks that they were talking about rand paul. i'm still not sure who this guy is besides from wisconsin iirc?

Yeah, Ryan feels more like a younger Jack Kemp. Supposed to give the ticket heft, but instead gives it somebody who puts people to sleep.

zombie-eyed granny starver iirc

this guy is a deficit hawk

a real hawk for deficits

so, will ryan also run for his house seat?

if there is a deficit, he will fly over it and then strike

If it is Ryan, the latter paragraphs of that Ryan Lizza profile are going to get circulated quick.

why would you release this information on a friday night/saturday morning anyway

No, it won't be tabloidish like with Palin (xpost), but they will go after Ryan's budget furiously--I think they've been hoping for him, but be careful, etc.

Gotta think Ryan is a poor choice. His budget plans didn't stand up to any scrutiny.

At an Atlas Society meeting celebrating Ayn Rand's life in 2005, Ryan said that "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand", and "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff."